Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden helped save an 11-year-old boy’s life after a car crash on Interstate 35 in Iowa over the weekend.

Van Orden told the Washington Examiner that he was driving with his family near Osceola on Saturday when he saw a Dodge Grand Caravan veer off the road and break apart. The retired Navy SEAL immediately pulled over and ran to the wreckage.

On the passenger side, he found the boy with a deep leg wound and arterial bleeding from his wrist. Van Orden used socks from his luggage as makeshift tourniquets.

Other motorists stopped to help. A man fashioned a splint from a windshield wiper, and a woman who said she was a medic secured a tourniquet on the child’s leg. Together, they stabilized the boy until paramedics arrived 10 to 15 minutes later.

Van Orden told the outlet that he visited the boy in the hospital on Monday, though he did not disclose his name.

He credited the cooperation of strangers for preventing a fatal outcome. “We’re in the middle of somewhere, and this happens, and people just start showing up,” he said. “It’s amazing.”

The congressman noted the accident occurred on the second anniversary of his daughter’s death. “God works in mysterious ways,” he wrote on X. “I am so thankful to have been able to make sure this young man’s father did not join the one club you never want to be in.”

God works in mysterious ways.

This happened last Saturday but the story came out today, the second anniversary of our sweet daughter’s passing.

I am so thankful to have been able to make sure this young man’s father did not join the one club you never want to be in. https://t.co/NBvhbjZfjl

— Derrick Van Orden (@derrickvanorden) August 19, 2025